Peter Filichia is a New York-based theater critic for The Newark Star Ledger newspaper in New Jersey and New Jersey’s television station News 12. He blogs weekly forMasterworksBroadway.com and is the author of the books The Biggest Hit of the Season /The Biggest Flop of the Season (Applause Books, 2010) and Let’s Put on a Musical!: How to Choose the Right Show for Your School, Community or Professional Theater (Back Stage Books, 2007). For 10 years, he also wrote a column,“Peter Filichia’s Diary,” that appeared Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on the website TheaterMania.com; Theatergoer’s Diary for www.theater.com for two years; Stagestruck for Theater Week magazine for its entire nine-year run, and for three years on Playbill-on-Line. He has recently joined Music Theatre International as a guest columnist for MTI’s Web site, The Marquee, writing “Filichia Features,” original weekly articles on all-things musical theater.

Peter served four terms as president and chairman of the nominating committee of the Drama Desk, and has also been a member of the nominating committee for the Lucille Lortel Awardsand is host of the Theatre World Awards. He has also written the liner notes for many Broadway cast albums, including Jesus Christ Superstar and Fade Out – Fade In, and is the critic-in-residence for theUniversity of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

He has appeared on television with Sally Jessy Raphaël, Phil Donahue, and on Saturday Night Live. In 2004 and 2005, he hosted, with Matthew Murray, the live theater discussion show Bitch or Brag About Broadway at New York’s 45th Street Theatre.

Peter Filichia is the New York-based theater critic emeritus for The Newark (N.J.) Star Ledger newspaper and News 12 television station. He is also the author of Let’s Put on a Musical (Back Stage Books, 2007), now in its third printing; Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hits /The Biggest Flops of the Season (Applause Books, 2010); and Broadway Musical MVPs 1960-2010: The Most Valuable Players of the Last 50 Seasons (Applause Books, 2011), chosen one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Performing Arts titles of 2011. His new book, Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks: A Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals That Did Not Win the Tony Award, will be published in May, 2013 by St. Martin’s Press.
Peter has been a columnist for Playbill, Theater.com, Theatermania and Theater Week. He blogs weekly at MasterworksBroadway.com; and writes “Filichia Features”for Musical Theatre International’s Web site The Marquee, and “Filichia on Friday” for Kritzerland Records’ Web site.
Before joining the Theatre World Awards in 1996 as host and head of the selection committee, Peter served four terms as president of the Drama Desk. He has served on an assessment panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and is currently critic-in-residence for the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the musical theater judge for the ASCAP Awards program.